Harry Potter and the Order of the Lava Cake

Doc Nikki and I went to see the latest Potter film last wednesday with Michaela, who was the only diwata who showed up to meet us at the Block. It was freezing, freezing cold in the cinema, but what was that when there was nicely grown-up Daniel Radcliffe to radiate a little heat from off the screen? Okay, that sounds a bit pedophiliac, doesn't it? Gosh, I wish I were seventeen again.
My hat's off to David Yates for being able to cobble a movie out of the impossibly thick "Order of the Phoenix". Reading that volume was a nightmare for me because it was choked with characters and details that tended to fall off the stack as the story went on. I thought this new movie was choppy, but it did a fine job of extracting the gold out of the ore. My favorite scenes? Dumbledore's army practicing defensive spells in the Room of Requirement, and the charmingly loony performance of Luna Lovegood. I have to say that although the Harry Potter-Cho Chang extended kissing scene was a thrill (I sound like such a perv), I'm gunning for Ginny Weasley because they look so much better together (her and Harry of course, not her and Cho--now that would be lesbian).
After the movie (and after defrosting the icicles that clung to our exposed body parts), our trio had an early dinner at Bacolod Chicken Inasal, peeked into a few shoe shops, and then ended up at Fully Booked. The doc and I debated briefly about the pronunciation of "Maugham" as in W. Somerset (my guess was wrong and hers was nearly right; it's 'môm', according to the Oxford english dictionary), waxed ecstatic about Edward Norton playing the deliciously straitlaced but sexy Dr. Walter Fane in "The Painted Veil", and then we had to calm ourselves with coffee at The Press. We split a lava cake between us (a la mode!) and had yet another moment of ecstasy. Teenage wizards and bacteriologists happily forgotten, for the meantime.